Ignore Form

By · November 21st, 2006 · Letters

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With most of the media's attention focused on the elections, it has become easy to slip an agenda-driven form letter into a newspaper opinion page. Ted Martindale's letter calling for Americans to stop eating fish ("Projected Seafood Decline Stinks," issue of Nov. 8) is a great example.

The same exact letter, word-for-word, was published by at least 15 other U.S. newspapers this month. Each time, a different person "signed" it.

This scam is run by animal rights groups that preach strict vegetarianism. One such organization, the Farm Animal Reform Movement, uses a computerized system to send thousands of duplicate letters to newspapers every year.

Activists are told by e-mail to lie when editors call to verify that they are, indeed, the "authors."

The animal-rights fringe frequently claims that animal protein will be the death of us. But as U.S. meat and fish consumption has increased in recent decades, our life expectancy has skyrocketed, too. Besides, zealots who resort to mass-produced, phony letters to make their point don't deserve to be taken seriously.

-- David Martosko Director of Research Center for Consumer Freedom Washington, D.C.

Save Jail Space for Violent Criminals
With significant budget cuts coming to city government (see Porkopolis on page 15), it seems foolish to pay millions of dollars to build a new jail to hold those convicted of marijuana possession. I would rather spend money on health clinics and swimming pools for the kids in the summer.

Instead of a new Hamilton County jail, which does nothing to change substance abuse, we could use fines, community service and treatment. As well, we could follow this same policy for other non-violent misdemeanor cases and save lots of taxpayer money and save expensive jail cells for dangerous people. More jail is not efficient.